What if We Could All Finally Agree That Equal Opportunity Joking Does Not Exist?

Tracy Morgan’s apologies regarding his homophobic rant a few weeks back littered the web (as here and here), as did reactions to his anti-gay routine. However, most of the condemnation of Morgan has circulated around his framing of homosexuality as a “mistake” as well as his failure to take gay bullying seriously. Additionally, Tina Fey was been singled out with calls that she needs to fire Morgan (a move that Melissa McEwan of Shakesville aptly described as “an echo of the age-old stereotype that boys will be boys and it’s up to women to soften them and control them and deliver consequences for moral failures”).

In contrast, what received scant attention was Morgan’s anti-lesbian rant “that there is no way a woman could love and have sexual desire for another woman, that’s just a woman pretending because she hates a fucking man.”

In a move that is far from new, Morgan denied lesbians even exist, then went on to make many homophobic jokes about gay men. The blogosphere largely responded to this story in kind, leaving out (or not mentioning) Morgan’s anti-lesbian joke.

Here I am reminded of Adrienne Rich’s classic essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” in which Rich eloquently and exhaustively examines how the denial of sexuality for women is a means to control and suppress ALL females, not just lesbians.

Rich’s key point that male (hetero)sexuality is forced upon women can be linked to Morgan’s rant, which itself can be read as a comedic enforcing of compulsory heterosexuality. As Morgan’s “joke” suggests, women only “pretend” to be lesbians to get back at men. Yes, Morgan, because all desire revolves around the mighty phallus.

Apparently Morgan fails to appreciate that without his gay and lesbian co-workers, he, as Tina Fey put it “would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with, or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket.”

“30 Rock,” in contrast to Morgan, does recognize lesbians exist and does a good job of joking about lesbian identity without offense (as Fannie’s Room argues here).

As noted at After Ellen, “It’s no secret lesbians love Tina Fey” and, to her credit, Fey seems to understand that there is no such thing as equal opportunity joking. In her GLAAD award acceptance speech she noted “so much what makes the difference between a joke being offensive and being funny is the context it is in and the intention behind it.”

In regards to Morgan, the intention was clearly not to promote acceptance or to breakdown stereotypes. Instead, it was hate speech masquerading as comedy. As Renee of Womanist Musingsargues,

“Morgan like many comedians believes that comedy is specifically designed to be a shield that makes hate speech acceptable. Instead of claiming to be ‘an equal opportunity jokester,’ what he should have said is that he is an equal opportunity bigot.”

Tami of What Tami Said echoes this sentiment, noting “No comedy is really equal-opportunity. Why? Because our society is not equal opportunity. We are not all the same.” To illustrate her point, she argues that jokes about those who have privilege in society are not going to have real world consequences in the same way that jokes about marginalized groups are, that “No matter how many stupid jokes you tell about George Bush, none of this is likely to change for him. Nor will things change for people like him. Put it this way, no one is likely to stop hiring heterosexual, Christian, rich white men, because of George Bush.” No, nor is anyone likely to try and claim that heterosexual, rich, white men don’t exist.

2 thoughts on “What if We Could All Finally Agree That Equal Opportunity Joking Does Not Exist?”

I think the “shield” has finally been reduced to a veil, and a pretty damn thin one at that. It’s bizarre enough knowing that pockets of unbridled hate still exist, more or less in the shadows. But to have such a high profile person come out and unscrew the lid off it in a public venue, with people cheering him on, tells me that we have not come as far as we flatter ourselves into believing we have. And it’s ironic as hell that many of the people who laughed with him against gays and lesbians, would laugh just as hard at jokes he might not find so cleaver. In my experience, it’s rare to find a bigot who has whittled their pool of human annoyances down to only one category.

Infinite Monkey,
I have to agree with you that “we have not come as far as we flatter ourselves into believing we have.” And I so agree with your astute and well-put observation that “it’s rare to find a bigot who has whittled their pool of human annoyances down to only one category.”
Thanks for reading and commenting!

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